Unintelligent Remarks
Children dancing at a school I visited in Ghana, December 2006.
In a bit of racial irony, I'm celebrating having passed my mid-terms as a first year doctoral student only to hear yet again that I'm not as intelligent as whites. This wisdom comes to me from no less than a pioneer in DNA research. Here are a few samples of the comments of this man as quoted in the New York Times:
A profile of Watson in the Sunday Times Magazine of London quoted him saying that he is "inherently gloomy about the prospect of Africa" because "all our social policies are based on the fact that their intelligence is the same as ours - whereas all the testing says not really."
While he hopes everyone is equal, "people who have to deal with black employees find this is not true," Watson is quoted.
"There is no firm reason to anticipate that the intellectual capacities of peoples geographically separated in their evolution should prove to have evolved identically," Watson wrote. "Our wanting to reserve equal powers of reason as some universal heritage of humanity will not be enough to make it so." (Read the whole article here)
In fairness to this man, he did have a sudden epiphany and has apologized for his remarks. This reminds me of a couple of similar comments that I have heard over the years. In one case a co-worker of my mother assured her that her son must have gotten accepted to Harvard because he was a minority because my mother was "not that smart". In another case I was discussing issues of race with a philosophy professor and was told emphatically that "no important philosopher would come out of Africa in the next 20 years." Finally in a lengthy email exchange with a few years ago with someone in the neurosciences, I had to endure the assertion that if relationships had been discovered between race and certain inherited health problems, then why couldn't there be a relationship between race and intelligence. In this case it was a Baha'i that was saying this. My arguments that there was neither scientific evidence nor a single sentence in the Baha'i Writings linking race and intelligence could convince this misguided soul.That blacks are fundamentally idiots and/or immoral beings has echoed throughout both scientific and popular discourse for centuries now and is a favorite pretext for all number of personal behaviors and public policies that are detrimental to our well being and very survival.
I don't think that it is a coincidence that this story in the Times has come out during the Jena 6 crisis and similar acts of institutional aggression towards black people, especially the young.
The remarks made by this "scientist" are hardly remarkable as they represent a view held by many people, including some blacks themselves! That our various miseries might have something to do with 500 years of enslavement and colonization at the hands of an allegedly superior race seems to not fit into the race=intelligence equation. Of course, perhaps I am not smart of enough to recognize that I'm just inferior.
"Thy day of service is now come. Countless Tablets bear the testimony of the bounties vouchsafed unto thee. Arise for the triumph of My Cause, and, through the power of thine utterance, subdue the hearts of men. Thou must show forth that which will ensure the peace and the well-being of the miserable and the down-trodden. Gird up the loins of thine endeavor, that perchance thou mayest release the captive from his chains, and enable him to attain unto true liberty. Justice is, in this day, bewailing its plight, and Equity groaneth beneath the yoke of oppression. The thick clouds of tyranny have darkened the face of the earth, and enveloped its peoples."
(Baha'u'llah, Gleanings from the Writings of Baha'u'llah, p. 92)
10 comments:
Hi Phillipe
I had a long comment to post but have deleted it in favor of the following quotation I found which is on better authority:
Pauline
"One of the important questions which affect the unity and the solidarity of mankind is the fellowship and equality of the white and colored races. Between these two races certain points of agreement and points of distinction exist which warrant just and mutual consideration. The points of contact are many; for in the material or physical plane of being, both are constituted alike and exist under the same law of growth and bodily development. Furthermore, both live and move in the plane of the senses and are endowed with human intelligence. There are many other mutual qualifications. In this country, the United States of America, patriotism is common to both races; all have equal rights to citizenship, speak one language, receive the blessings of the same civilization, and follow the precepts of the same religion. In fact numerous points of partnership and agreement exist between the two races; whereas the one point of distinction is that of color. Shall this, the least of all distinctions, be allowed to separate you as races and individuals? In physical bodies, in the law of growth, in sense endowment, intelligence, patriotism, language, citizenship, civilization and religion you are one and the same. A single point of distinction exists -- that of racial color. God is not pleased with -- neither should any reasonable or intelligent man be willing to recognize -- inequality in the races because of this distinction."
(Abdu'l-Baha, The Promulgation of Universal Peace, p. 67)
Pauline, I agree!
Hi Phillipe,
You may be interested in some recent studies that show intelligence comes in many forms, and that the forms of intelligence found in a community tends to mirror the type of intelligence that's most needed in that community. IQ tests, the usual test of intelligence, measure only one type of intelligence. Here's an article that talks about some of the issues:
http://listener.co.nz/issue/3517/features/9725/eureka.html
Phillipe, your post brings to mind the Raging Rooks chess team from Adam Clayton Powell Jr. Junior High School 43 in Harlem. In 1991 they tied for first place in the National Junior High Chess Championship. They beat 60 junior high-school teams including the defending champion.
To quote from an article in the New York Times: "These teen-agers from Harlem have grown accustomed to incredulous stares in airports and hotels when they explain that, no, they are not a rap group, and no, the trophy is not for basketball."
Steve thank you for that link and I am familiar with the multiple intelligences research. IQ has long been critiqued as a Eurocentric measurement of intelligence by folks such as Na'im Akbar and others.
Larry O., your example is priceless. It reminds me of a conversation I had with a white teacher when I was a kid in Tennessee. She kept insisting that I lived in the "projects" and I kept telling her that my family lived in a town house. Or another white teacher when I was 12 who insisted that my parents had done my homework for me because it was done "too well".
Phillipe,
Same song, different arrangement. This is shades of William Shockley, another Nobel Prize winner, father of the transistor, and some say, Silicon Valley. In the 70's, he got lots of TV time, and so reached mass audiences, with his claims of scientific proof of Black inferiority. I remember that when questioned about great men such as Dubois and Douglass, he replied that the cause was white ancestors. -Althogh the logical conclusion to this statment was that "race mixing", which Shockly warned against, was highly conducive to intelligence and greatness.
Interestingly, nowadays the comments of this scientist did not get much play. His fellow scientists quickly disavowed his views. So I like to think he is just an old man with little influence who is living in the past.
Mass audiences, and the media today reacted more and spent much more time discussing Imus' views that certain female basketball players are--to quote my son-- "in need of follicular relaxation". (I don't know that this is necessarily progress).
By the way, call me cynical, but perhaps the "epiphany" you mentioned had less to do with a change of mind and heart than that the remarks precipitated suspension of his privileges --titles and money. Like parents taking away a child's toys unless and until they apologize. Hmmm.
I cannot begin to express my utter disappointment when Dr. James Watson made those comments...I get the feeling that he is suffering from an avanced stage of Alzheimers Disease and pray for his soul...
Dear anonymous, that may very well be true and if so I empathize with him. However, his remarks reflect a commonly held view of black people which is my point. There are people who have all their mental faculties who make these kind of remarks privately and publicly and they have implications for the lives of people of African descent all over the world.
Sadly, even eminent scientists have prejudices. From what I have read, Dr James Watson has been referred to as arrogant. I don't know whether this is true or not (I've never met the man), but he is quoted as saying that scientists (who are, by fact of being scientists, very clever) should be allowed to do what they want by way of research and that the rest of us are not clever enough to regulate scientists (or something to that effect). If this is true, Watson is, sadly, treading a path of delusion, a dangerous path that others before him have trodden, the path to the acceptance of the superiority of some categories of human beings over others.
There is one thing that lies at the end of that path - genocide. Now, Watson may not advocate genocide, but sadly he gives potential hope and succour to those who would like to kill the "other" for their imagined inferiority.
When scientists abuse their work and when they stray out of their areas of expertise to make judgements about moral values, human worth, and so on, then we should treat them with the scepticism they deserve - I was going to write "disdain", but I don't think that Baha'is should be showing disdain to people, no matter how misguided.
Watson's views are the polar opposites of the Baha'i teachings on human oneness and equality. What is the best way to overcome the views of Watson and others who try to find "scientific" justification for claims that certain groups are inferior? I suggest we follow 'Abdu'l-Bahá's guidance and replace a thought of war with a stronger thought of peace. In other words, it is more effective to promote the positive than to oppose the negative.
here's a comic from a Newspaper that you might be interested in
http://www.salon.com/comics/boll/2007/12/27/boll/index.html
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